


Walking Home Along Roads Paved with Promise

by themodlibrarian



Category: Rurouni Kenshin
Genre: Friendship, Manga Verse, Meiji Era, movie verse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-27
Updated: 2017-01-27
Packaged: 2018-09-20 04:35:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,063
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9475934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/themodlibrarian/pseuds/themodlibrarian
Summary: “It’s cruel to say out loud. But you have more experience than I do in this regard.” Kaoru swallows and meets Misao’s eye. “Do you ever worry that he’ll leave you?”In which Kaoru considers the differences between Misao and herself while wondering if she can ever be sure Kenshin will not wander again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> A drabble of sorts. Partly movie verse. Partly manga verse. Mostly me taking creative liberties for that of which I should not. The title is a mouthful, I know. I'm sorry.

“Do you ever worry…” Kaoru begins but trails off. She stares out the open shoji, into the courtyard. It’s warm for early winter, but she still keeps a blanket over her shoulders and revels in the warmth from the teacup between her hands.

“No. Not once. Never.” Misao leans forward and grins, dark hair catching the dying sunlight filtered through bare trees. 

Kaoru smiles and tosses a hard candy at her. But Misao catches it easily and tucks it into the sleeve of her haori. 

_For the road_ , her eyes say, sparkling with mirth. 

Kaoru lets her smile linger a moment longer, but it slips without her permission and she averts her eyes. Misao sobers and touches Kaoru’s knee with the tips of her fingers. 

“It’s cruel to say out loud,” she tries again. “But you have more experience than I do in this regard.”

Misao tilts her head, listening. The teacup sits in the palm of her free hand, a wisp of steam curling into the air and vanishing. 

Kaoru swallows and meets Misao’s eye. “Do you ever worry that he’ll leave you?”

She winces as Misao looks taken aback, blinking and looking like something within her retreats although she does not move. 

They stare at each other in silence, the shishi-odoshi in the garden the only marker for time that passes.

“No,” Misao says eventually. She sounds like she is going to say more, but she doesn’t. 

Kaoru flushes and begins to put the tea things back onto a tray. “I’m sorry,” she says, voice caught in her throat and sounding like a whisper. “I’m sorry,” she says again, partly to be heard and partly because Misao sitting across from her suddenly doesn’t feel like the Misao she thought she knew. 

The blanket slips down her arm and she almost knocks over the bowl and whisk but Misao lays a hand on her wrist. Kaoru stills and dares a look at her younger friend. 

“I’m sorry,” she says again, this time with more force. She’s never had a close female friend before and is desperate to not drive her away, but at the same time, she thought Misao had been like herself. Then she remembers that there are women at the Aoi-Ya and somehow Misao seems like a different person.

“Before he came back,” Misao says, but pauses to bit her thumb. “After I began looking for him and the others, I used to wonder, would he stay if I asked? Would he find a way to leave me behind again?”

Kaoru nods and keeps her gaze down on the tray.

“I knew the answer, but I kept looking anyway.” Misao sweeps her hair back from her face and squints into the twilight. The train leaves at six o’clock. Half of Misao is sad to leave her Tokyo friends. The other half is content to travel quietly with Aoshi.

“After he’d left you not once, but twice,” Kaoru looks up then, eyes luminous with unshed tears she does not realize are there. “How do you convince yourself every morning that he did not leave in the night?”

Maybe Kaoru imagines the mischievous twinkle in Misao’s eye that suggests a dirty joke. Maybe she doesn’t. But Misao’s face is otherwise serene and serious. 

“I’m sorry, Kaoru-san,” Misao says. “I can understand what you’re asking of me. But Himura is very different from Aoshi-sama.”

“But are you that different from me?”

Misao shrugs and places her cooled teacup onto the tray. “Probably not,” she says, irritatingly calm. Kaoru gathers a fistful of the blanket pooling in her lap. “But our circumstances are.”

“How?”

When Misao looks at her, Kaoru is struck again by that feeling that perhaps she does not know Misao _quite_ as well as she thought. 

“Because his life is mine,” Misao says. “He may be my Okashira once more, but he cannot forget who allowed him that privilege.”

“It doesn't bother you that he might only be staying out of obligation?” 

The look on Misao’s face suggests to Kaoru that although she might be young and more familiar with the new era of peace, her soul and way of thinking is grounded in the traditions of the times of and before the revolution. 

“He stays,” Misao says, tilting her head to gaze out into the courtyard where the clouds have turned orange and purple, “Because I forgave him. He has lost and thrown away so much, he will not lose what I have given.” 

A sound Kaoru does not catch at first causes Misao to start and twist on the tatami to look toward the hall. Kenshin slides open the door. His hakama is dusty from town but he smiles as he sees them still sitting on the floor. From behind, Aoshi steps forward, face serious in a way that reminds Kaoru of Misao.

She’s startled that it is not the reverse. 

“You haven’t come to take Misao-chan away already, have you?” she asks with a smile that does not reach her eyes. Kenshin peers at her but says nothing.

“We’ll come back,” Misao says, standing. She says it like she means something else and Kaoru feels like everyone now knows what they were just talking about.

Kenshin suggests they walk to the station together as Aoshi helps Misao with her coat. 

“Then we can make plans for the next time you visit,” he says, smiling and Kaoru does not miss the glance Misao shoots her way.

Kaoru thinks they look like a married couple the way they bow at the train doors, except Misao does not walk behind Aoshi but in front of him. Aoshi, however, does not seem to care. She thinks she too would walk, not behind Kenshin, but beside him. For one who fought so hard for peace and a new era, she can’t see him minding.

Aoshi and Misao settle in a cabin not far from where Kaoru can still see them through the smog and crowd. She watches him put a blanket over Misao’s knees and how Misao follows him with her eyes even as she chatters, mouth never still. 

Kenshin touches Kaoru’s shoulder and she starts. His fingers catch the ends of her hair when she whips around to face him. 

“Yes?”

“I just thought we should be heading home soon.”

“Home?”

Kenshin looks at her strangely but smiles. “Yes,” he says. “Home.”


End file.
